I shifted closer, the water lifting between us. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“There are days when I almost believe that,” she whispered. “I should have tried harder to get her away from him. She was my other half. Some days I miss her somuch.” She sniffled and turned into me, circling her arms around me as she heaved a soft sigh. “You know what my friend Syd said today?”
“What?” Smoothing my fingers along her spine, I enjoyed the feel of her against me, but I hurt for her all the same. Sorry wasn’t enough to fix the fact that her sister was gone. That was an empty word. Hattie’s grief had lasted for years and was a wound that hadn’t healed. She had no answers, and that almost seemed worse than knowing.
“She said she’d be excited to be an aunt.” I didn’t pause, but my heart leapt. “I was mad for a minute.”
“Explain it to me.” I had a good idea about why, but I wanted to hear it from her. There was a huge degree of excitement at the thought of a baby. My siblings would be terrified or horrified, in equal parts, right now at the trajectory and speed of what was happening with Hattie and me. Then they’d be all-in. “Tell me why, Hattie.” I encouraged again as she bit her lip a little, trailing a hand down my chest and bending towards my lips.
“Maybe I want to move on to other things,” she murmured, sliding back over to straddle me again.
It isn’t that I’m not all in, but I wanted to finish this conversation. “Tell me why first.” It seemed important. “Then I’m all about moving on.”
“Jane should have been here. If I am,” she said hurriedly, looking at me as if I were about to explode. “That’sstupid, right? Syd will be great, but I don’t even know. And anyway, we would still have so many things to figure out. Maybe you don’t …” she stopped herself.
“Hey,” I moved my hands down to her hips, steadying her against me. “Listen to me, Trouble. It isn’t stupid at all. Of course, you’d want your sister here if it were possible. I’m sorry that it isn’t. But if you are pregnant, then I’m excited. We’d raise the baby together. I’d hope that you’d stay here, but if you didn’t want to, we’d work it out. Whatever you need, okay?” I meant it.
The Holts had given me the foundation of a family, and I loved my brothers and sisters, but I wanted my own. The idea of Hattie and a baby was so tantalizing that I could barely contain the glee that I felt at the thought of it. It was probably unhinged thinking about her being pregnant when we barely knew each other, but I’d be happy. Everything would work itself out. I just knew it.
My lips brushed hers again, soft at first, to check in with her. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t some itch I needed to scratch. She was worth so much more than that. Maybe our attraction had been hot and instant, but I think even then I’d known that it was so much more than that.
Her hand cupped my jaw and pulled me closer. The kiss deepened, slow and hungry, as the water rocked gently against the sides of the tub. I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her against me.
CHAPTER 37
Kipp
It had taken another day for the official red tape to come through from CID from Casper, but sometimes cold cases didn’t get the urgency they deserved. Hattie had been in a frenzy the previous day, looking through what I would assume was all the information available on Barry Galloway.
She’d taken Casper’s words to heart when he said he wanted her to keep her podcast going. She and her crew, or squad, had released an episode that immediately sparked intense internet speculation about the Galloways.
In the early morning, the vista area was filled with sweeping trees and berry brambles that sparkled in the sunshine. From the overlook, it had been full of drama and distance. Today, the space shrank to dirt, pine needles, and the steady rhythm of my own breath.
I adjusted the strap of my pack and checked the orange flagging tied to a low branch. Grid C–7. My grid. Thirty yards wide, running downslope toward a bend in the creek. There was a certain beauty to being on a SAR grid search that was enjoyable. My specialty here wasn’t in leading or even organizing people for this kind of effort.
My expertise was in being part of a team. It wasn’t in directing it. Here, I was only a trained pair of eyes walking a line someone else had drawn on the map. It was nice to lose myself in that instead of focusing on nonessential things, like the fact that eager-Beaver Roger had shown up wanting to ‘bond’ or some shit. Hattie had given me an admonishing look when I’d made Casper assign him the grid as far away from me as possible.
The ground here was dry from a good month without rain, packed hard where deer trails cut through, softer under the ferns. Five months was a long time. Long enough for spring rains and animals to erase almost everything a person left behind. There might be something to find, and I knew Casper hoped we would see signs of either a struggle or a burial site. It was clear from the amount of blood in the car that Allison Finch was dead. No amount of cleaning was going to keep that a secret.
Focusing on what was right in front of me, I kept my eyes fixed on my surroundings, searching for any disturbed earth. But everything I observed was familiar: a brokenbranch at shoulder height that looked old enough to predate winter, and a scatter of rocks near the base of a fir. Still, I crouched down, fingers brushing the dirt, looking for the unnatural—fabric, plastic, or anything that didn’t belong.
Nothing.
I stood and kept moving my boots, crunching softly in the dirt with each tiny step. We were spaced out well, orange vests flickering through the trees at the edges of my peripheral vision. Off to my left on the upslope, I caught a glimpse of blonde hair pulled back under a baseball cap. Hattie’s head was angled down as she worked her own strip of ground.
Out here, attention wandered at your own risk. People thought searching was about sweeping glances and big discoveries. Grid searching wasn’t like that. There was a reason that it was called a grid. It was refusing to let your brain fill in gaps, just because you wanted to finish your section. You had to be methodical and careful, working in tandem so that every square was covered. So nothing was missed.
I moved more slowly near the creek, where the ground dipped and debris gathered at the bottom. If someone had walked away from the car, if they’d stumbled or been dragged, this was the kind of place that might have hidden something longer. Water changed things, especially when it was covered with leaves or run-off. Thisenvironment could be insidious for rot, but it was all pretty far from the car for a body.
Kneeling again, I pushed aside the wet leaves with the tip of my glove. Beneath the moldering twigs and branches was nothing but mud, and a few faint tracks of small things with too many legs. Nothing that I needed to record.
I tried not to think about a woman bleeding out in the back seat of her own car while the world kept turning.
The radio made soft static crackles against the straps of my backpack, with the steady murmur of check-ins and coordinates. All of it was professional and controlled. There was no chatter from anyone that indicated what we were all thinking, which was that this place had already given up everything it was going to give. It was a trap that you could fall into if you weren’t careful—that pit of doom. You needed to keep the faith.
I straightened, stretching my lower back, and scanned ahead. The slope steepened here, with rocks peeking through the dirt along with occasional berry shoots. The ground here was hard and uneven, with poor footing. Making a mental note to angle my boots slightly, I kept within my boundaries and kept going.
This was where experience mattered, not as a cop, but as someone who knew how people moved when they were panicked, injured, or dying in the woods. If they were running, they took the easiest path. Often they wentwith gravity, which meant downhill. They followed water. They clung to the easiest route, even when it led them to a worse place.
